Once, when we were racist, he told me a story. I had them all in half a voice, short and straight. Aitite was a man of a few words:

– In the cottage we have in the orchard are three races of rats of the same species. Wild, ordinary and fat. Savages live outside, in the bosque.Normales and coarse inside the hut.

The savages make their shelters in the outer fields and know that in recent times the forest is quite empty, we take wood, stones, land and lots of mud to build a hut.

Fat rats developed a special skill that can climb the walls and beams of the hut. So eat everything you want, because I get the loaves, the fruits and whatever I left on the table.

Common rats live in the soil cracks of the chabola. They haven't developed the ability to scale. Even though they sleep in the shelter, they can't eat the food that's in the chabola. You have to feed on the sands that fall upon the coarse.

What happens is that once I made bread in the hut's oven, a curious scene happened. A small group of wild rats, attracted by smell, congregated on the porch. It's pretty common. Once the food is finished in the forest, rats approach the hut to see if they can eat any of the rest. I didn't care. When the loaves were cooked, I left them on the table to cool down and went home.

As soon as I closed the door, I heard some noises inside the hut, something like a “chik txik txik txik txik”. When I looked out the window, I saw four thick rats down the beams. They looked like spiders. They came to the table and ate the bread, while the normal ones waited under the table for crumbs of bread.

Meanwhile, ferocious, starving rats were passing through a glass hole in the window. The glass was broken and hurt, but many got into the hut.

The normal ones attacked the savages, although they could only reach the hardest crumbs.

The thick rats continued to eat their hook. Finally, I swear they did it on purpose, they threw bits of bread into the place where the savages were. The normal men were furious and chunked pieces of bread screaming and biting. No pity.

“Well aitite, somehow… it’s normal – I remember I answered him. Rats are disgusting: they eat anything, they spread disease, they're scavengers, they're opportunistic and they're selfish. They would go over any place to fill their belly.

“Don’t draw conclusions until you hear the whole story,” my grandfather told me.

The next day, as I approached the hut, I saw wild rats gathered at the door. Small stones were stacked at the door of the cottage. They had covered the window hole and the cottage slits. The savages were building a wall to close the cabin exits.

As I walked in, I felt blows, cracks and restless races inside the walls. The rats, simple and fat, were isolated, and they ran out of food. The table was half empty, but fat rats kept eating bread. The commons observed how the savages headed towards the forest and tried to flee behind them. But the wall was very solid. Insurmountable. Then they realized that the hut, without the forest, was nothing more than a warehouse. A cage.

The thick rats, able to climb through the walls, quietly pulled out of the fireplace and offered the savages, who headed towards the forest, some pieces of bread that they carried in their mouths. The savages were able to get food on their own, they didn't need handouts. They had surrounded the thick rats, they were few, and their ability to climb outdoors was useless. They were bitten by their legs and forced to cross the wall. He entered the cottage again.

And that's what you've seen today, a massacre between fat rats and ordinary rats. But well, as you say, rats are disgusting animals. I'd have to smoke the hut, don't you think?

When the stories were over, Aitite was drawn with a malicious smile. Then he turned on television. He liked La Roulette de la Fortuna, Walker Texas Ranger, soap operas and Indian and cowboy movies.

When I got older, I read that wild rats are also called "black rats." And I smiled.